Ross Stores, Inc.
Off-Price Retail and ApparelFounded 1982- Updated July 2025
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: July 2025
CorpDigest
Ross Stores, Inc.
Company History
Founded 1982 in Dublin, California
Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya
Stuart Moldaw opened the first Ross Dress for Less in 1982 in San Bruno, California, at a time when off-price retail was a scrappy category operating in the shadow of TJ Maxx, which had launched its own off-price format in 1977. The concept was straightforward: buy name-brand merchandise from manufacturers and retailers who needed to clear inventory, mark it significantly below the original retail price, and sell it in no-frills store environments where the cost structure allowed for deeper discounts than traditional retail formats could sustain.
The 1988 IPO brought Ross to public markets with a store count that was still regional. The expansion that followed over the next two decades built the national footprint that makes the opportunistic buying model viable: a buyer who can guarantee a manufacturer they will absorb 500,000 units across 1,500 stores gets a different price than one who can only absorb 50,000 units across 150 stores. Scale creates negotiating leverage in the closeout buying market, and Ross's expansion compounded that leverage year after year.
The dd's DISCOUNTS banner launched in 2010 as a format targeting a slightly different customer demographic, adding a second channel to capture price-sensitive shoppers who found even Ross's off-price positioning too premium. Barbara Rentler's appointment as CEO in 2014 brought operational continuity to a model that had been developed over three decades — no strategic reinvention, no digital pivot, no loyalty program redesign. The 2024 milestone of $21.5 billion in net sales validated that disciplined repetition.
Stuart Moldaw is the founder of Ross Stores, Inc., having started the company in 1982 under the name Ross Dress for Less in Northern California. Moldaw, a retail veteran who had previously worked in the apparel industry, recognized the untapped potential of the off-price format following the success of early pioneers like TJ Maxx and Marshalls on the East Coast. His retail expertise was instrumental in the early development of the company's merchandising strategy, supply chain network, and store operations model, establishing the foundation for the company's aggressive organic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. His leadership style was characterized by a deep commitment to operational efficiency, a relentless focus on the customer experience, and an unwavering commitment to providing extreme value to the American consumer. Moldaw's vision of creating a scalable, high-velocity retail operation that could adapt to changing consumer preferences and macroeconomic conditions has guided Ross Stores' evolution from a regional off-price concept to a $21.5 billion discount retail powerhouse. His legacy lives on in the company's proprietary buying organization, its massive real estate footprint, and its psychological treasure-hunt shopping environment that drives high-frequency customer traffic and maintains an industry-leading 13.2% operating margin. Moldaw's contributions to the founding and early development of the company are recognized as foundational to its success and its evolution into a dominant force in the off-price retail sector.
Stuart Moldaw founds Ross Dress for Less in Northern California, establishing the foundation for the off-price retail model that would eventually become the largest off-price apparel and home fashion retailer in the United States.
Ross Stores completes its initial public offering, providing the capital necessary to fund its aggressive expansion, invest in its proprietary distribution network, and develop its direct-import capabilities.
Ross Stores launches the dd's DISCOUNTS banner, instantly providing the company with a foothold in the extreme-value family market, a demographic segment that the legacy Ross Dress for Less banner had historically under-penetrated.
Barbara Rentler assumes the role of CEO, initiating a comprehensive operational optimization program that fundamentally re-engineers the company's supply chain, real estate deployment, and labor management models.
Ross Stores generates $21.5 billion in net sales for the fiscal year ended February 1, 2025, reflecting a successful stabilization of customer traffic and a favorable product mix shift toward higher-margin branded apparel and home fashion merchandise.
Ross Stores has historically relied on organic growth and internal development to expand its capabilities, focusing on aggressive new store openings and the development of its proprietary buying organization and supply chain network.
Ross Stores was founded by Stuart Moldaw in 1982 when he opened the first Ross Dress for Less store in San Bruno, California. The name Ross had originally belonged to a small Northern California department-store chain that Moldaw acquired in 1982 and repositioned from a traditional retailer into an off-price apparel and home goods concept. Moldaw, a serial Bay Area retail entrepreneur who had previously founded specialty retailers Country Casuals and Pic-A-Dilly, recognized that the off-price model pioneered by East Coast operators such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx had room to scale in the western United States. The early Ross stores carried excess and closeout merchandise from major brands and department stores at 20 to 60 percent below conventional retail prices, organized into easy-to-shop categories with limited fixturing. The first store generated strong volumes and the format expanded rapidly: by 1985 Ross operated 100 stores and was preparing for an initial public offering. In August 1985 Ross Stores completed its IPO on NASDAQ under the ticker ROST. The combination of the off-price model, low fixed costs, and aggressive new-store openings established the operating template that has been refined but largely preserved over the subsequent four decades.
In 1986, just one year after the public listing, Ross Stores was acquired in a leveraged buyout led by Mervin Morris, the founder of the Mervyn's department-store chain, together with partners. Morris and his backers paid approximately $150 million for the company and quickly began upgrading the management team, the merchandising organization, and the store-expansion plan. Morris brought decades of West Coast retail experience and a particular focus on supplier relationships, which would become the foundation of Ross's long-term competitive advantage. Norman Ferber, who had previously held senior roles at other retailers, was promoted to CEO in 1987 and served until 1996. The Ross format was refined under the new ownership: cleaner store layouts, stronger supplier negotiation, and a faster store-rotation cycle that brought new inventory every week. The company returned to the public markets in 1986 with a renewed strategy. Ross Stores went on to grow from approximately 100 stores at the time of the 1986 buyout to over 1,000 stores by 2008 and over 2,100 stores by the mid-2020s, making the 1986 reset one of the most consequential strategic interventions in the company's history.
Ross Stores has grown organically from a single San Bruno store in 1982 to approximately 1,830 Ross Dress for Less stores and 360 dd's Discounts stores across 43 US states by the end of fiscal 2024, totaling roughly 2,190 locations. The expansion has been deliberately slow by big-box retail standards, typically averaging 70 to 100 net new store openings per year, which has allowed the company to preserve store-level economics, train operating teams, and maintain merchandise availability. Each new store typically generates approximately $4 to $5 million in annual revenue at maturity with relatively low capital expenditure (roughly $1.5 to $2 million per store). The footprint is concentrated in California, Texas, Florida, and the western and southern United States, with limited or no presence in the northeastern markets dominated by TJX Companies. Management has continued to guide that the long-term US store potential is approximately 2,900 Ross stores and 700 dd's Discounts stores, suggesting the company remains years away from saturation despite four decades of growth. The expansion model is funded entirely through operating cash flow with minimal debt, a discipline that has supported one of the longest streaks of consistent same-store sales growth in US retail.
dd's Discounts is the secondary banner that Ross Stores launched in 2004 to serve a lower-income demographic with a smaller, lower-priced store format. The concept targets households with annual incomes below approximately $40,000, compared with the roughly $50,000 to $80,000 household incomes that anchor the core Ross customer base. dd's stores are typically smaller (about 22,000 square feet versus roughly 30,000 for a Ross), carry a more value-tilted merchandise mix, and are located in urban and inner-suburban locations rather than the suburban strip centers that dominate the Ross footprint. The chain reached 350 stores by the end of 2023 and approximately 360 by 2024, with longer-term store potential estimated at about 700 locations. dd's was created to address a market gap that the company observed in lower-income trade areas adjacent to existing Ross stores, where customers were buying at Ross but the assortment was priced above the optimal level for the demographic. The strategic role of dd's is twofold: incremental store growth in trade areas where a second Ross would cannibalize, and demographic diversification that reduces Ross Stores' exposure to any single income tier of consumers.
Ross Stores closed all of its physical stores between mid-March and late May 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented disruption for a company that depends entirely on physical traffic and that operates no e-commerce channel. Fiscal 2020 sales fell 23 percent to $12.5 billion from $16.0 billion in fiscal 2019, and the company recorded a small net loss for one of the only times in its public-company history. Management drew down its $800 million revolving credit facility, suspended share repurchases and the quarterly dividend, and raised additional capital through a bond issuance to preserve liquidity. By the second half of 2020 and through 2021 the business recovered rapidly as off-price retailers benefited from elevated household income, stimulus payments, and customer migration away from struggling traditional department stores. Revenue in fiscal 2021 rose to $18.9 billion, exceeding the pre-pandemic level. The dividend was reinstated and share repurchases resumed in 2021. The 2022 inflation cycle compressed margins as supply-chain costs and freight rates rose, but the company recovered margins through 2023 and 2024, ending fiscal 2024 with $21.5 billion of revenue and one of the longest sustained share-price rallies in retail.